OPINION
published: 25 February 2016
Edited by:
Rachel Jane Ellis,
Linköping University, Sweden
Reviewed by:
Judith F. Kroll,
Pennsylvania State University, USA
*Correspondence:
Adolfo M. García
adolfomartingarcia@gmail.com
Specialty section:
This article was submitted to
Language Sciences,
a section of the journal
Frontiers in Psychology
Received: 16 November 2015
Accepted: 10 February 2016
Published: 25 February 2016
Citation:
Calvo N, Ibáñez A and García AM
(2016) The Impact of Bilingualism on
Working Memory: A Null Effect on the
Whole May Not Be So on the Parts.
Front. Psychol. 7:265.
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00265
Frontiers in Psychology | www.frontiersin.org
doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2016.00265
The Impact of Bilingualism on
Working Memory: A Null Effect on the
Whole May Not Be So on the Parts
Noelia Calvo 1, 2 , Agustín Ibáñez 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and Adolfo M. García 3, 4, 8, 9*
1
Institute of Philosophy, School of Philosophy, Humanities and Arts, National University of San Juan, San Juan, Argentina,
2
Faculty of Psychology, National University of Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina, 3 Laboratory of Experimental Psychology and
Neuroscience, Institute of Translational and Cognitive Neuroscience, INECO Foundation, Favaloro University, Buenos Aires,
Argentina, 4 National Scientific and Technical Research Council, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 5 Universidad Autónoma del Caribe,
Barranquilla, Colombia, 6 Department of Psychology, Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, Santiago, Chile, 7 ARC Centre of Excellence
in Cognition and its Disorders, Sydney, NSW, Australia, 8 UDP-INECO Foundation Core on Neuroscience, Diego Portales
University, Santiago, Chile, 9 Faculty of Elementary and Special Education, National University of Cuyo, Mendoza, Argentina
Keywords: bilingualism, bilingual advantage, executive functions, working memory, L2 proficiency, simultaneous
interpreting
Abundant research has examined the relationship between bilingualism and working memory
(WM), a system that keeps information accessible while dealing with concurrent processes,
distractions, or attention shifts (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974; Engle et al., 1999; Conway et al.,
2002). Some studies have reported no WM differences between bilinguals and monolinguals
(Bialystok et al., 2008; Feng, 2009; Bialystok, 2010; Namazi and Thordardottir, 2010; Bonifacci et al.,
2011; Engel de Abreu, 2011), leading top scholars to maintain that this domain is impervious to
bilingualism. For instance, Bialystok (2009) first claimed that WM is indifferent to the development
of a non-native language (L2). Later, she slightly reframed her position, stating that WM is only
occasionally enhanced by the bilingual experience (e.g., Bialystok et al., 2009, 2012). Likewise, in
another study, Engel de Abreu (2011: p. 6) concluded that “bilingual experience does not seem
to convey any advantage in working memory abilities,” which aligns with recent criticism on the
very notion of bilingual benefits (Duñabeitia and Carreiras, 2015; Calvo et al., 2016; Paap et al.,
2016).
However, there is no shortage of evidence for enhanced WM in bilinguals. While full-blown
WM advantages have been only sparsely reported, several studies yielding no overall benefits
did find such effects in specific tasks or conditions. This is also true of comparisons between
bilingual groups who daily exert different levels of demand on their WM systems (in particular,
simultaneous interpreters vs. non-interpreting bilinguals). These findings indicate that WM is
not completely unaffected by the distinctive executive demands of bilingualism. Instead, they
suggest that a bilingual advantage may indeed exist in some aspects of WM, as we argue
below.
The hypothesis underlying the field is that cognitive skills developed to cope with the demands
of controlling two languages generalize to more efficient processing in executive domains, including
WM. Relevant evidence is typically garnered as follows. First, two sociodemographically matched
samples are recruited, one comprising bilinguals and the other composed of monolinguals—
alternatively, these could be interpreters and non-interpreters. A set of tasks (including WM
paradigms) are then administered to both groups, and their respective results are compared.
Crucially, WM tasks vary widely across studies, as they involve different stimuli, procedures, and
presentation modalities.
Within that literature, some studies reported concrete advantages for bilinguals. For instance,
Bialystok et al. (2004) compared bilingual and monolingual adults (aged 30–80) in three different
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Calvo et al.
studies using a non-verbal Simon task. Overall, bilinguals
outperformed monolinguals when WM demands were high,
and the extent of the difference was proportional to age. Further
evidence for a bilingual WM advantage was reported by Morales
et al. (2013) in two experiments with children. To this end, the
authors used a Simon-type task and a visual-spatial task. Their
overall results showed that bilinguals surpassed monolinguals in
all the conditions involving high WM and executive demands.
Similarly, the bilingual children studied by Blom et al. (2014)
showed better performance in visuospatial (Dot Matrix/Odd-
One-Out) and verbal (Forward Digit Recall/Backward Digit
Recall) WM tests when vocabulary was controlled for,
especially in tasks that involved processing and not just
storage.
Moreover, studies often cited as disconfirmatory evidence
have actually reported enhanced performance by some bilingual
groups under specific conditions. Feng (2009) presented various
WM tasks to monolinguals and bilinguals from two age groups:
children and adults. Despite null results in most conditions, a
general bilingual advantage was observed in a spatial WM task
(recalling the position of randomly ordered items). A similar
result was reported by Bialystok et al. (2008), who evaluated
bilingual and monolingual younger and older adults. In this
case, participants completed different WM, lexical retrieval, and
executive control tasks. While the adult groups showed no
significant WM advantages, this effect did emerge for younger
bilinguals in a Corsi Block task. Also, Namazi and Thordardottir
(2010) compared the performance of young bilingual and
monolingual children through assessments of verbal short-term
memory, verbal WM, visual WM, and visual controlled attention.
Although both language groups performed similarly in most
tasks, bilinguals showed positive correlations between visual WM
and attentional control skills. Finally, Bonifacci et al. (2011) tested
bilingual and monolingual children with a choice reaction-time
task, an anticipation task, a go/no-go task, and two WM tasks
(numbers and symbols). In this case, only bilingual infants were
faster in a visual anticipation task calling on WM resources.
In sum, even those studies which failed to find overall WM
advantages did report such an effect under certain circumstances.
In this sense, most studies have explored the issue using
words or digits as stimuli (e.g., Bialystok, 2010; Engel de Abreu,
2011). Given that bilinguals generally have more difficulty than
monolinguals in word processing (Bialystok et al., 2009), tasks
with high verbal requirements may not be well suited to test
the bilingual WM advantage hypothesis. Indeed, as seen above,
WM tasks employing (non-verbal) visual stimuli have yielded
consistent advantages for bilinguals.
Two views may account for this pattern. On the one
hand, the bilingual experience may selectively enhance a
visually-specialized subcomponent within WM. This possibility
is compatible with Baddeley’s model (Baddeley and Hitch,
1974; Baddeley, 2000), which posits that WM comprises a
visuospatial sketchpad, separate from the so-called phonological
loop. Moreover, it aligns with meta-analytic data indicating
that the development of specific components of WM may
be differentially associated with L2 proficiency (Linck et al.,
2014). On the other hand, it may be that an undivided WM
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Bilingualism and Working Memory
interacts with several systems in long-term memory. Those
systems which are inherently weakened by bilingualism—in
particular, verbal processing (Bialystok, 2009)—would carry over
their processing disadvantages to any task which taps into them,
including WM.
Note that executive skills needed to direct visual attention
to location and space may be honed by increased language
processing demands. In fact, attentional control mechanisms are
essential to process visual (Chun and Wolfe, 2001) and verbal
(Bialystok and Cummins, 1991) information. Moreover, the
attentional control processes of WM may account for individual
differences in the bilingual literature (Linck et al., 2014). In this
respect, modality-specific bilingual advantages in WM may be
related to increased attentional skills. Recent evidence supports
this conjecture. Tse and Altarriba (2014) assessed bilingual
children with varied proficiency levels through the Simon task
(Simon/Simon switching) and an operation-span WM task.
More proficient bilinguals showed better conflict resolution
and WM capacity when the tasks demanded more attentional
control.
Finally, if the proposed effects stem from increased control
demands during bilingual processing, they should be greater
in bilinguals who daily face particularly stringent processing
conditions, such as simultaneous interpreters (García, 2014).
Relationships between WM and interlingual processing skills
have been reported in studies which did not consider interpreters.
For example, Kroll et al. (2002) compared word naming and
translation performance between native English speakers with
different levels of L2 competence. In addition to the main finding
of the study (better performance for the more fluent group), a
positive correlation was found between the participants’ WM
and their translation performance. Such a result fits well with
meta-analytic evidence that WM is robustly associated with L2
processing/proficiency outcomes (Linck et al., 2014). In light
of these findings, it is also worth considering comparisons
between professional interpreters (whose language processing is
repeatedly subject to high WM demands) and non-interpreter
bilinguals—an empirical corpus that previous discussions have
mostly neglected.
Bajo et al. (2000) assessed lexico-semantic, comprehension,
and WM abilities in professional interpreters, interpreting
students, non-interpreter bilinguals, and monolinguals. The
interpreters showed increased WM spans for digits and words,
in addition to faster categorization, reading, and lexical access
skills. Interpreters also showed increased abilities in other studies
tapping WM storage through visual span tasks (Christoffels
et al., 2006; Yudes et al., 2011). For instance, Christoffels et al.
(2006) compared language and WM skills among professional
interpreters, bilingual university students, and highly proficient
L2 teachers. The interpreters outperformed both other groups
in WM measures, including word span and reading span—for a
fuller discussion, see García (2014).
Moreover, those advantages have been repeatedly observed in
tasks involving verbal stimuli. Thus, while WM enhancements
led by bilingualism proper (as opposed to monolingualism)
may be more pervasive in (non-verbal) visual tasks, those
guided by differential processing skills between bilingual
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Calvo et al.
groups could possibly manifest in other domains. Indeed, the
meta-analysis by Linck et al. (2014) revealed that positive
correlations between L2 proficiency and WM may be more
pronounced for verbal than non-verbal measures of the latter
domain.
In sum, specific aspects of WM may actually be enhanced
by the bilingual experience. Discrepant results seem to reflect
methodological differences among the studies, especially in terms
of task- and stimulus-related variables. Specifically, failure to
observe WM differences between bilinguals and monolinguals
in most previous studies may be explained by the use of
verbal stimuli, given that bilingualism seems detrimental to
vocabulary skills. Future studies should evaluate which particular
components within WM functioning are sensitive to the effects
of bilingualism. For instance, it would be useful to assess whether
bilingualism enhances the attentional components of WM in a
stimulus- and modality-independent fashion.
To conclude, WM is a complex domain both in its internal
configuration and in its connections to other cognitive systems.
Bilingualism may not enhance WM function at large, but it
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AUTHOR CONTRIBUTIONS
Overall idea: NC, AG. Literature review: NC, AI, AG. Manuscript
elaboration: NC, AI, AG.
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Conflict of Interest Statement: The authors declare that the research was
conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could
be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Copyright © 2016 Calvo, Ibáñez and García. This is an open-access article
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